Justice Richard Goldstone, lead author of a controversial United Nations-endorsed report on last winter's Gaza conflict, and former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Dore Gold sharply disagreed at Brandeis last Thursday about the extent to which war crimes took place during the conflict between Israel and Hamas in front of an audience of over 700 attendees from Brandeis and surrounding communities, as well as online viewers. The event marked the first time that Goldstone publicly discussed the report with a senior Israeli official. In a discussion that saw some tense moments and a brief protest, the two speakers exchanged their views on the report and answered questions from students.

The event was organized by the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, of which Goldstone is the advisory board chair, and the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies.

The report, released Sept. 25, alleges that both the Israeli and the Palestinian parties in the conflict committed war crimes. It calls on both sides to establish independent domestic commissions to look into the accusations or otherwise possibly face prosecution from the International Criminal Court located in The Hague. The U.N. General Assembly was deliberating over the report as the event at Brandeis took place and endorsed it later on Thursday, submitting it for further attention to the Security Council.

Goldstone defended the report, stating that the mandate under which the Gaza fact-finding mission was working was evenhanded toward both sides in the conflict, while Gold criticized the report as an unfair indictment of the Israeli military and Israeli society.

Goldstone stated that the report would not constitute evidence in a court of law, which is why independent investigations were necessary. Furthermore, he said that "our mandate did not evaluate the right to use military force," emphasizing repeatedly that "Israel has the right under international law to not only to protect its citizens, it has a clear duty to do so." The mission's aim instead was to evaluate whether "the manner in which force was used was consistent with humanitarian law [and] law of armed conflict."

In his talk, Goldstone said he had rejected the original mandate of the fact-finding mission approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council because he found it too one-sided against Israel. Goldstone said he agreed to lead the mission after the President of the Human Rights Council gave him the opportunity to draft his own mandate that he considered evenhanded and that he believed would "make it clear that [it would be an] investigation of human rights violations and humanitarian violations committed by all sides." "It's the first description in a U.N. document of the details of the terror that is being suffered by the residents of southern Israel, such as those who live in the city of Sderot," Goldstone said.

He described it as the first time that a U.N. report on the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had a balanced mandate. "It was sincerely my hope that Israel would seize this opportunity of an evenhanded mandate [in order to] to look into the issues that concerned it," he said. He noted that the Israeli government declined his requests to speak or meet with Israeli government officials.

Instead, he explained that the mission conducted over 50 phone conversations with community leaders and witnesses from affected Israeli areas and gained a sense of how many residents had left the area and how the economy had suffered. As indicated in chapter 24 of the report, he said those firsthand accounts "led us to the conclusion that militants have committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity."

With regard to Israel, Goldstone alleged that following the 2006 Lebanon war, an Israeli military official said Israel "will apply disproportionate force" to villages from which rockets are fired, a strategy Goldstone alleged that Israel adopted in the Gaza conflict.

"War crimes are committed when disproportionate force is used," Goldstone stated. "That strategy that was adopted in Gaza by the Israeli Defense Force completely undermined the norms of humanitarian law, the distinction between civilians and combatants, [and] that is the essence [of] what war crimes [is] all about," he said. In defending itself, he said Israel's "responses must be proportionate: That is the law."

Responding to Goldstone, Gold stated that "The [language] of the report . amounts to an assault on Israeli society as a whole." Furthermore, he said it "simply distorts the very essence of what Israel stands for and provides fuel for those seeking its delegitimization."

Gold stated that the report failed to adequately reflect Hamas' role as a perpetrator of terrorism. "Its forces appear innocuously as 'Palestinian Armed Groups.' . The report acquits Hamas almost entirely," said Gold.

He went on to say that the report misrepresented the motive of Israel's actions. "It obfuscates the fundamental fact that [Israel's military action] was a war of self-defense," he said. Israel's goal, he said, was "to finally bring the rain of rocket fire on its civilians to a halt," adding that the report suggested that the invasion was a pretext to punish the Gaza population for electing Hamas.

He emphasized that the Israeli military had gone out of its way to minimize civilian casualties, a strategy he said Hamas had complicated by purposely placing its military positions within civilian areas on purpose or in mosques. Israel, he said pursued "a deliberate strategy to try and separate Palestinian civilians from the military capability that Hamas intentionally embedded."

Gold gave his speech with the help of a PowerPoint presentation that included video clips and photographs to provide examples of Israel's effort to prevent casualties. He explained that that the military had sent multiple warnings to civilians by entering into Palestinian radio transmissions, dropping leaflets or directly contacting families through their phones. Gold played television reports that he said depicted Hamas leaders discussing the warnings that were received and urging supporters to continue to form "human shields" around military targets.

He said that when a missile was launched against certain targets and the military learned that civilians were around it, the soldiers controlling the missile "veered the rocket away from the target area into an open field." He stated that given Israel's great effort to protect civilians "and the devotion of man power and resources to make this happen, how can this been sees as consistent with the charge that Israel deliberately attacked civilians?"

During the question-and-answer session the two speakers had some more direct exchanges about the details of the report.

As an example of one of the incidents the mission examined, Goldstone mentioned an attack on a mosque in Gaza City. He said 21 people were killed when a missile from IDF ground forces hit it while 300 worshippers were inside during combined morning and evening services. Even if there were weapons in the mosque, he said, there is no basis in law for such an attack. "You don't mortar shell during a service. You do it at night," he said. "That hasn't been explained at all. It screams out for an open, credible investigation."

Gold stated that it was not clear that Israeli ammunition had exploded in the mosque or who had operated the mosque. The Israeli position is that "based on information that is publicly available, Israel did not attack that mosque," Gold said he had full confidence in the Israeli judicial system to investigate questionable incidents, explaining that Israel had civilian oversight over the Israeli military.

Goldstone countered that "Ambassador Gold is conflating Israel's outstanding civil legal system with military justice." With the investigation to date Goldstone said, "The military is investigating itself behind closed doors. That's not a legal system, that's not a judicial system: It's not justice at all." He stated that he was only aware of "one conviction for the theft of a credit card; that is demeaning to the victims of Gaza."

They also disagreed about the role of Hamas. Gold stated that "he did not think that 'you can treat Hamas as a legitimate regime" by not adequately characterizing Hamas' terrorism activities.

Goldstone said that Hamas "is for good and ill the government of Gaza, . and at the same time, it's got a military wing." He added that the mission received very unsatisfactory answers from Hamas. Asked about the location of rocket firings or the physical and mental state of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, he said the answer was, "We don't know; that's the military wing." Goldstone said, "They've very shrewdly adopted this divorce where the one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing."

It was not in Israel's interest to engage with the U.N. because it does not have any natural allies on the world stage, Gold said. "The Jewish state is a minority in the international system," he stated. "That is a good enough reason for the state of Israel to not cooperate with the investigation of this sort."

Goldstone responded that he and some within Israel thought it was advisable "exactly for that reason to cooperate with an even-handed mandate and to take the moral high ground and [to insist] that this was a new beginning for the Human Rights Council treating Israel in an evenhanded fashion."

Prof. Ilan Troen (NEJS), one of the moderators of the event, said that since Thursday he had received letters from England, Israel and many states complimenting the event and the "civil way" it was conducted. "There have been all kind of distortions about the inability of Brandeis to maintain a proper academic culture over contentious items, particularly relating to the Middle East," he said. "I think what this event demonstrated is that's not true.